The Harem Bride by Blair Bancroft

sweet mockery of his tone was enough to
send Penny into battle. There were those who said she had been much
overindulged by a doting, though sometimes careless, aunt. It is
possible they were correct.
    “ I saw you standing here, examining the
guests,” Miss Blayne informed the viscount, “quite as if you were
Zeus himself looking down from Olympus. And ‘tis plain Aunt Cass
and I are also numbered among the mere mortals attending Lord
Elgin’s reception. I am quite sorry for you, my lord, for I fear if
you scorn the ambassador’s guests, you will miss much of the exotic
flavor of Byzantium.”
    Before responding, Viscount Lyndon broke his
aristocratic stance long enough to offer Miss Pemberton an
adult-to-adult look of condolence. “Byzantium is long gone, child,”
he announced to Penelope, “its treasures ripped from its palaces
and cathedrals and carted off to enrich the cities and manor houses
of the greedy, thieving knights of the Fourth Crusade. Most
particularly, Enrico Dandolo, Doge of Venice. Did you not know the
very walls of St. Mark’s are coated in the spoils of
Byzantium?”
    Penny’s chin went up. “Of course I knew, my
lord. My Aunt Cass’s instruction is never bound by the narrow
confines of religious preference. I am well aware that Christians
looted Byzantium long before the coming of the Ottomans.”
    Jason Lisbourne glared, and then his lips, of
their own accord, began to twitch. What English schoolgirl could
even find Constantinople on a map, let alone have the slightest
inkling of its history? Miss Penelope Blayne might look a scant
thirteen—except for that figure, of course—but her mind and
education might well be the equal of his own.
    “ Have you just arrived in
Constantinople, Miss Blayne?”
    “ We have barely had time to settle into
our villa,” she replied eagerly, the clouds clearing from her face
as if by magic at this simple offer of a truce, for she was at that
age where she could go from child to woman and back to child again
in a matter of moments. “We have seen nothing of the city but the
limited view from our carriage. I can scarcely wait to see
more!”
    A slow smile lit the viscount’s face. It was
like the sun coming out from behind a great black cloud. Penny was
dazzled, while Jason Lisbourne was as captivated by her innocent
beauty and unfeigned enthusiasm as any other young man might be,
particularly one so far from home.
    “ I believe,” he drawled, “that I am
able to show you something you would truly enjoy. Miss Pemberton .
. . if you and Miss Blayne would be willing to accompany me on a
small climb up to the roof? I vow you will find the view most
rewarding.”
    Since Cassandra Pemberton’s agile brain could
not have devised a better scheme for throwing the two young people
together, even if she had sat up half the night attempting to do
so, she swiftly accepted Viscount Lyndon’s invitation.
    “ The light is beginning to fade,” Jason
said as he guided the ladies toward an outside staircase at one end
of the loggia, “so we must be quick. I promise you the panorama
will amaze you.”
    “‘ Tis not half so high as the tower at
Pemberton Priory,” Penny scoffed as they shortly found themselves
on a flat roof high above the courtyard. “ O-oh! ” Miss Blayne was silenced.
    The soft sibilance of a hundred voluble
guests drifted up on the seabreeze wafting from the great harbor
below. And somehow, even the strains of the orchestra had become
more mellifluous, magic notes for a night in a land so exotic it
seemed almost to be part of a tale in a storybook and not real at
all. Beyond the courtyard and the green of the Embassy’s park-like
setting was a sight even Penny’s lively imagination could not have
conjured. Not only were they on the roof above the British Embassy,
but the entire embassy grounds were on a hill rising steeply above
that magnificent harbor known as the Golden Horn at precisely the
point where it joined the Straits of